


being that i'm better than fine

by siddals



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Comment Fic, F/M, Minor Character Death, Past Abuse, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 20:22:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2520605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siddals/pseuds/siddals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Constance achieves happiness. D'Artagnan helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	being that i'm better than fine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evewithanapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/gifts).



Constance cries when her husband dies and not just at the funeral. She doesn't cry because she loved him, or because it's expected of her or even because of her lack of security. She's not sure why she cries, really ( _it means you have a good heart_ , D'Artagnan would say). It makes her think of that day she found him first and how he'd told her his life would be on her. That same sting of guilt, of responsibility, even though this time she knows she had nothing to do it.

D'Artagnan comes to visit her shortly afterward and when she sees him on her doorstep she wants to kiss him, to take him upstairs to her bed. She knows he isn't here to pick up where they left off, that he's not the sort of man to do that.

"I'm sorry," he says, with his eyes soft and she kisses his cheek and sends him on his way.

-

Jacques leaves her a good share of money, though enough is given out to his brothers and extended family that she isn't quite comfortable (she doesn't, somehow, think this is so much an act of kindness to them as it is a punishment to her). She keeps the house and the business and makes a good enough living on it. Businesswoman might not have been her chosen profession, in some kind of utopia where she'd get to really choose, but she likes owning her own home and collecting her own money. It'd go too far to say she doesn't have to answer to anyone, but she doesn't have to answer to Jacques Bonacieux and that is closer to freedom than she's ever been.

The musketeers never really stop using her home as a meeting place. They didn't even before Jacques' death. She bandages their wounds and scolds them for being callous and sometimes comes with them when they have need of her. She'd rather _be_ a musketeer than a merchant's wife or even a merchant but she has the bits and pieces of it at least. It doesn't exactly satisfy her (will she ever be truly satisfied in this world that only gives her bits and pieces?) but it is something. Constance is too practical to scoff when she is blessed, even if it isn't nearly by enough.

-

She takes D'Artagnan back to her bed a month after Jacques dies. It isn't something she plans, exactly, but she does start it. He is the last left at her house after a mission. She watches the others trickle away, Athos first, then Porthos, then Aramis. Finally only D'Artagnan is left, his feet shifting, seeming unsure if he should stay or go.

She kisses him. He's clearly flustered, his eyes widening for a second as though he's not sure what to _do_ with this, he obviously didn't expect it, but then he kisses her back, weaves a hand into her hair.

When she breaks the kisses, she smiles, a real grin, not like the ones she gives to customers and leads him upstairs.

-

He asks her to marry him two weeks later. She doesn't expect him to say it, though maybe she should have, and she must look so stunned that he ends up flustered.

"If it's too soon," he says, "if you still need time or don't want to to marry me, then I - "

It's the first time D'Artagnan to her memory has ever talked of _anything_ being too soon and she almost wants to laugh at that.

"People will think so," she says slowly.

"I don't care about people," he blurts out, "I love you. Utterly and without apology. They don't matter."

"I didn't say I cared," she says, with a little laugh, "Or at least not too much."

"Does that mean yes?" he asks, and his face is so hopeful that she grins a bit.

She only kisses him in response.

-

Her house becomes their house. Sometimes Constance can't believe it really happened, too unaccustomed to real good fortune but this is real enough. He wakes up in her bed in the mornings and falls asleep with her at night and they can walk in the street together without needing to be careful. Other than that, it's as it's always been with D'Artagnan ; he sneaks up behind her and kisses her neck when she's working (and sometimes she slaps him, lightly, if she's busy) and showers her in compliments. The Musketeers are still always there, in and out, Athos always frowning and Porthos and Aramis clapping when D'Artagnan kisses her, sometimes. (Before her wedding, the two of them teased her about throwing her life away on a hopeless idiot and she'd replied, "what shall I do with him, gentlemen? I seem to be stuck.") She still works, since D'Artagnan's wages are hardly enough to live on and he doesn't seem to mind in the slightest. She can't think of many men who wouldn't think such a thing a grevious insult, some of his Musketeers in arms perhaps but certainly nobody she met before him.

Her happiness seems almost strange to her at first but she grows used to it.

-

She suspects she's pregnant long before she says anything. She isn't sure, and it seems foolishness to say anything before she really knows. A crop of fears spring up along with it, about the money and D'Artagnan's absences and her body spinning out of her control and the women she's known who died in childbirth. She worries about D'Artagnan's safety from the first days she met him, so impulsive, so foolish sometimes but it strikes her all over again, what she'd do, a widow with a child this time. (She bites that back, it's too ugly.) _Then again_. She remembers before she met D'Artagnan, when she vaguely hoped she'd get with child if only so that there would be someone who loved her, someone who wasn't cold. It couldn't be more different now, she is loved and her house is busy and full of people she's chosen for herself, not ones forced on her by her husband or her parents. _What better place to bring a child_ , she thinks, _than this_? She catches herself thinking of a child racing through their house and probably terrorizing the lot of them and she knows that she wants it.

She says nothing.

-

When she tells D'Artagnan, a grin breaks across his face and he crushes her in his arms almost immediately. There's none of the hesitation she felt, and that's why she loves him, he springs into these things with utter hope and a total lack of cynicism. She can't be that way all the time, but she is with him and she is far more than she used to be.

Over the next months, she gets bigger and her back never stops aching and D'Artagnan fusses over her, as she knew he would. She keeps running the business (it's not a very difficult pregnancy, she's told, which makes her hope to never experience a truly difficult one) and refuses to put any kind of stop to her life.

-

"Have you thought about names?" he asks, when they're in bed, him with one hand over her belly and another stroking her hair.

"I don't know," she says, "I thought of Alexandre for a boy. For your father."

He looks genuinely touched, as though he hadn't expected her to give that answer, obvious as it seems to her.

"Yes," he says, "yes, I think that's right. For a girl?"

"I don't know," she says, "nothing I think of seems quite right."

He kisses her neck lightly.

"We'll think of something."

-

The birth is short and uncomplicated, or that's what she's told by the doctor, though it hardly feels that way to her. She aches and yells and it feels like it takes days, not hours. The doctor tries to tell D'Artagnan to leave, that it's not customary but he refuses to budge and the doctor seems to realize that his chances against a King's musketeer are slim. It's hour upon hour and D'Artagnan grows paler than she's ever seen him before and grips her hand too hard, even when the doctor tells him there are no signs of danger.

Their daughter is born early in the morning. She's tiny but her cries are strong and loud, as though she's already commanding the world to pay attention to her. Her hair is thick and dark and she looks at Constance with the biggest, most adoring eyes she could imagine. 

D'Artagnan cries and kisses her and tells her that he loves them both and Constance realizes she's crying as well.

"Have you decided on a name?" he asks, a few minutes later, a grin still spilling over his face.

"I thought of Sylvie," she says, "What do you think?"

"That's perfect," he says.

-

Sylvie always cries half the night and Constance can't remember having been so tired in her life, but the time passes quickly. Before she knows it, Sylvie is walking and babbling and insisting on slashing at things with a wooden sword and then there is another on the way. The business flourishes and D'Artagnan receives commendations for soldiering and she stops worrying about money quite so much, though she quite never stops worrying when he's sent on a campaign and she doesn't think she ever will. Athos seems to get thinner and sadder and Aramis continues much as he's always been, wild and loud and Porthos takes a wife, a Spanish woman in exile, she hears (she also hears that sometimes Aramis slips up to their bed, but that's none of her concern, really, as long as everyone is happy). Fleur has grown into a firestorm of a young woman. She sometimes comes by with her companion, a pretty girl about her own age and Constance welcomes them, happy that Fleur is finally happy, after so much tormenting herself (she told Constance once, of her true feelings towards women and Constance has kept that secret ever since). The musketeers still send for her, sometimes, if they need a steady shot with a gun or someone respectable looking enough to sneak into certain places and if she's not too busy with the business or the children, she always accepts.

Sometimes she realizes she's happy and it's strange to her, being happy without even knowing or thinking about it, to be happy for so long. It's not something she thought possible, really, but it fell upon her. 

She's hardly one to turn it away.


End file.
